Findings

Closing The Achievement Gap: Education reformers have long
hoped that portfolios and other performance-based testing tools might
reduce the troubling gaps in scores posted by black and white students
on traditional tests. But a recent study suggests that although these
new assessments may reduce those disparities, they may not be able to
eliminate them altogether. The study, published in the October
Harvard Educational Review, involved more than 5,000 1st and 2nd
graders in Rochester, New York. As part of their classwork in language
arts, the students compiled portfolios of their work and took
standardized tests. The researchers used sophisticated analysis
techniques to look at the scores on both kinds of assessment. They
found that the difference between the scores of black and white
students was reduced by half on the portfolio assessments. But the
achievement gap between the genders grew by about the same proportion,
with girls far outscoring boys. Students from families poor enough to
qualify for federal lunch-assistance programs and students with limited
English skills scored equally poorly on both assessments. "The message
is that multiple indicators of performance give different groups
different opportunities to demonstrate their skills," says Jonathan
Supovitz, lead author of the study and a research associate with
Horizon Research in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Becoming Fluent: School programs designed to teach English to
nonnative speakers may underestimate the length of time it takes for
them to become fluent, according to a study by a California research
group. The problem is that many such programs are based on studies that
take into account only those students who have become fluent. The
researchers say the practice is akin to estimating the time it takes to
run the Boston Marathon by averaging the times of the first 100
finishers. "But a large number of runners never cross the line," says
Douglas Mitchell, a professor of education at the University of
California at Riverside and the director of California Educational
Research Cooperative, a coalition of 26 school districts. Similarly, a
large number of English-language learners do not master the language
during the three or four years they receive services from schools. To
measure how long it takes for students to become fluent, CERC
researchers measured the time students take to move from one stage of
English-language development to the next—with six stages in all.
At the lower developmental stages, the median time is 15 to 18 months,
they found. At higher levels, the median time is 28 to 31 months. Given
these findings, the researchers conclude, nonnative speaking students
may take as long as 10 years to pass through all six stages and become
fluent. To look at the full study, go to www.education.ucr.edu/CERCsite/santaana.htm.

The High Cost Of Vouchers: Many voucher proponents argue that
giving parents chits to send their children to the school of their
choice would force public schools to shape up. But Stanford University
researcher Henry Levin says the price tag for such a strategy would be
high: about $73 billion a year. Levin, who is on leave from Stanford
this year to lecture at Columbia University, and co-researcher Cyrus
Driver calculated that a number of factors would drive up the cost of a
voucher system. They point out, for example, that most students now in
private schools would want vouchers, too, adding $33 billion a year to
the national cost of public education. In addition, record-keeping
systems would be needed to track students and to monitor and evaluate
schools. Using the Social Security system as a model, the researchers
figured that operating such a mammoth data system would cost $2.5
billion annually. And getting all those children to the schools of
their choice wouldn't be cheap, either. The researchers estimate that
the proportion of students who ride buses to school would jump from 60
percent to 80 percent under a voucher system, adding another $42
billion a year. Overall, they conclude, the extra expenses would add
$1,500 a year per student to the cost of public education. Levin is
best known for his Accelerated Schools Project, a school improvement
approach that calls for speeding up the curriculum for poor and
low-achieving students rather than slowing it down, but he is also an
economist. The cost estimates are included in an article about vouchers
that Levin has written for the summer issue of Journal of Policy
Analysis and Management. Though the cost estimates are sobering,
Levin notes, that doesn't mean the current system shouldn't be changed.
"Nothing in this paper should give much comfort to those who might wish
to defend the status quo," he writes in a postscript to the article.
"In my view, considerable gains in educational efficiency are possible,
whether vouchers are the answer or some other type of system
reform."

A Brainstorm: Biological research on how the brain develops
has little relevance for classroom educators right now, a leading
proponent of cognitive science argues in a recent issue of
Educational Researcher. John Bruer, president of the James S.
McDonnell Foundation in St. Louis, criticizes what he considers a
recent overemphasis on neuroscience studies in education publications,
the news media, and statehouses. Some educators and scientists have
suggested that findings from brain research offer guidance for
early-childhood education, classroom instruction, and parenting
practices. But Bruer argues that not enough is known about brain
development and that conclusions about what is known are being
overgeneralized and misapplied. "The neuroscience and education
argument may be rhetorically appealing, but, scientifically, it's a
bridge too far," he writes. As an example, Bruer cites the argument
that the preschool years are critical for learning because that is the
period of greatest development of the brain's synapses—the
connections between brain cells. He points out that this reasoning
stems primarily from studies of rhesus monkeys, not humans. Other
studies show that this period of developing synapses, known as
synaptogenesis, occurs earlier in some parts of the brain than others.
For example, it occurs very early in the visual cortex, which controls
vision. But in the frontal cortex—responsible for planning and
integrating information—it continues into adolescence. For other
functions, synapses may continue to form and die over the course of a
lifetime. Bruer argues that educators should look for clues to
children's learning not in neuroscience but in cognitive science, which
probes the mental processes that underlie observed behavior rather than
the brain's biological underpinnings. The McDonnell Foundation supports
research in cognitive science, much of it directly related to classroom
applications. "If we are looking for a basic science to help guide
educational practice and policy," Bruer writes, "cognitive science is a
much better bet."

—Debra Viadero

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